About Fog & Form
Fog & Form began with a question. Why do the shirts that say San Francisco say so little about it?
The city we know is not on the souvenir rack. It is the fire call box on the corner, the streetcar that still runs, the mural someone repainted because it mattered, the taco truck with a line at midnight.
Those are the things people here are proud of, and they are the first things to go. Buildings come down. Businesses close. Murals fade. Neighborhoods change faster than anyone can write it down.
So we started keeping a record, and we chose to keep it on something people wear every day. Every design starts with research into a real place, object or moment. Every piece carries where it comes from and why it earned a place.
San Francisco has been counted out before. It burned in 1906 and hosted a world’s fair nine years later. There is a phoenix on the city flag for a reason. We make clothes for people who feel that.
We don’t design souvenirs. We study what survived.
Where the two meet is identity.
01
Fog
Atmosphere, ideas, history, contradictions, mystery and emotion. It is the marine layer that pours through the Gate every summer, and it is everything here you cannot pour concrete around: the Beats in North Beach, the Summer of Love in the Haight, the rainbow flag raised for the first time in 1978. For a small city, it has sent a lot of ideas out into the world.
02
Form
Permanence, concrete, steel, architecture, objects and infrastructure. It is what the city built and refused to give up: cable cars that have climbed these hills since 1873, the hydrant at 20th and Church that kept running in 1906, a bridge painted International Orange so it could be seen through the fog. These are the objects that outlast the people who made them.
What survived
- Cable car
- 1873Andrew Hallidie runs the first one down Clay Street. They are still operated by hand.
- Golden hydrant
- 1906After the earthquake, one hydrant at 20th and Church keeps working. It is repainted gold every April 18.
- International Orange
- 1937The Golden Gate Bridge opens in a color chosen to stand out in the fog.
- Rainbow flag
- 1978Gilbert Baker’s flag flies for the first time, at United Nations Plaza.
San Francisco, sharpened.
Heavyweight cotton, printed in the USA, for the people who live here, the people who left, and anyone who understands why it matters.